Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a variable size, uniform compression staple assembly and an associated anvil for use with a surgical stapling device. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to a two part, variable size, and uniform compression staple assembly for use with various thickness of tissue and an associated anvil for forming the staple assembly about the tissue.
Background of Related Art
Surgical stapling instruments or surgical staplers are used in many surgical operations to secure or join two or more tissue sections together. Some known surgical staplers are preloaded with a pre-chosen specific size staple for use in the surgical operations. However, the chosen staple is only capable of effectively sealing together a limited range of thicknesses of tissues. If the tissues are too thick for the chosen staple, the surgical stapler may not fully crimp the staple about the tissue resulting in the tissues pulling apart. Conversely, if the tissues are too thin for the chosen staple, the crimped or formed staple may not have enough compression to fully seal the tissues together resulting in leakage between the tissues. In other situations where the tissues are too thin for the chosen staple, the staple may be over crimped causing tissue penetrating tips of the staple to recurve back upon itself resulting in unnecessary puncturing of the tissues and again the possibility of leakage between the tissues.
Some surgical staplers are capable of accepting replaceable staple containing cartridges. Various ranges of different size staples may be provided by these cartridges for selection by a surgeon depending on the anticipated tissue thickness to be encountered. However, during a surgical operation, the surgical stapler needs to be removed from the operative site in order to replace one size staple cartridge with another when encountering differing thicknesses of tissues other than those anticipated.
Thus, it is desirable to provide a single size staple assembly capable of effectively stapling and sealing various thicknesses of tissue together. It is further desirable to provide an anvil for use with a surgical stapler and capable of securing components of a single size staple assembly together about tissue.